


At Your Service

by ohmyfae



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, More character tags as they appear, Pining, Some depictions of canon-typical violence, Totally indulgent fic full of longing and eventual smut, regency au, touch-starved Felix and Dimitri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:00:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24007018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: When the tragedy of Duscur wiped out the royal family of Faerghus, Prince Dimitri was also declared one of the dead. With Queen Cornelia on the throne and those who opposed her long since subdued, Felix Fraldarius has no intention of dwelling on the ghosts of his past, and just wants to survive the summer social season in peace. However, all of this changes when Prince Dimitri appears in his house one rainy evening...——i.e. A regency romance AU where Dimitri pretends to be Felix’s valet/servant while they plot to get his throne back, and Felix struggles not to stare when Dimitri walks around with his shirt open, hauling water and scrubbing down floors.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 108
Kudos: 223





	1. Chapter 1

Felix is fourteen when House Fraldarius falls.

They make their last stand on the beach, a few paltry lines of his father’s soldiers standing with their heels in the surf and the sea at their back. Felix, who had buried his father the night before, can still feel the sting of blisters on his hands as he’s driven into the freezing waves. Foam sprays over his shoulders. The current sucks at his legs, and as a mage parts the waves to take him by the wrists, he thinks of the old tales his mother used to tell, stories of selkies shedding their skin and walking among the villages of Faerghus, only to disappear into the surf the next night. He considers it, for a moment, a slow death in the brutal cold of the sea, but he’s too stiff to protest as he’s dragged onto the beach with what remains of his people.

“You have a choice,” a soldier says. He wears the royal badge of the army of Faerghus, but Felix knows better. The king is dead. _Dimitri_ is dead. Glenn. His father. The woman who sits on the throne of Faerghus is a glorified advisor with delusions of grandeur, and the Queen is gone—lost, perhaps, in the fields of Duscur. There is no royal line of Faerghus left to serve.

“You’re a child,” the soldier says, as though Dimitri wasn’t practically the same age as Felix when he was lost, as though Glenn weren’t just a few years older. “Of course you followed your father’s orders. But if you swear fealty here and now, we can prevent further bloodshed. Cornelia is not an unjust queen.”

Felix holds his breath. The soldiers kneeling on the beach are barely older than he is. One of them—A boot boy, gods, what was his name, what _was_ his name—is gasping blood into the foam, and the boy’s brother is sobbing as he’s dragged through the sand, low and wretched. Felix thinks of Glenn’s face when he’d left for Duscur, the way he’d ruffled Felix’s hair. _Take care of Father while I’m gone, will you?_

The sea roars behind him, dark and tossed by the wind, and Felix’s hair blows in his eyes. The salt stings, and his limbs tremble with the cold, and smoke blooms over the dunes where his family home once stood, but Felix is alive. The only people left to protect are here, bowed and ashen with pain as they are. There’s no use dying for the benefit of ghosts.

“Very well,” Felix says, and his voice is caught by a wind off the sea, lost in the thunder of the waves. “I surrender.”

***

The social season is in full swing on the day Felix Hugo Fraldarius returns to Fhirdiad, but his small home at the edge of the artisan district is blessedly empty. It’s a townhouse, a far cry from the sprawling estates of the nobles who live near the palace, with a back yard just big enough to grow a few patches of stubby grass and a door that keeps unlatching in the cold. 

No servants greet him when Felix enters. No one has lit the fire, swept the dust from the hall, or rushed to the foyer to take his coat. He hangs it on a hook himself, kicks off his muddy boots, and places his sword on the rack in what can conceivably be called a drawing room. It’s furnished, anyways, just like the rest of the house, jammed full with whatever he could save from the wreckage of the manor in Fraldarius. Felix walks around the house, gathering up the sheets draped over couches and tables, then opens up the windows and coughs out dust for a good half hour.

That’s how Sylvain finds him a few hours later.

“You really need to hire someone to do this for you,” he says, leaning on a clean patch of table while Felix scrubs the kitchen counters. He’s resplendent in his pressed trousers and flashy tailcoat, and even his hair is glossy and bright. House Gautier certainly hasn’t been hurting for funds, at least. “It’ll leave you more time for the season. Have you checked your mail yet?”

“Not interested,” Felix says. “And there isn’t a point. No one wants to invite me to chocolate, Sylvain.”

“ _I_ do. It’s your charming personality, Felix. It’s won me over.”

Felix gives him a dry look and keeps scrubbing. Almost a decade ago, when his father took up arms in his last-ditch rebellion, _Sylvain’s_ father chose to hang back and believe the official story that Duscur had killed the royal family. It means that now, Sylvain has three houses, a hefty inheritance to look forward to, and several horses he lets other people care for. Felix, meanwhile, has to make do with what the crown hasn’t taken, as well as the pittance allowed to a foot-soldier in Queen Cornelia’s army. It’s enough to get by, maybe. Not enough for a social season he doesn’t care for.

“Look, I have to talk to _Baron Dominic_ this afternoon,” Sylvain says, tracing whorls in the table. “And he likes you, because Annette likes you. Weren’t you in the same company or something?”

Felix shrugs. “Something like that. She was an officer, though. Most nobles are.”

“You’re still a noble, you know,” Sylvain says. He rolls his eyes at Felix’s pointed look. “Come on. For Annette, anyways, if not for me.”

Felix sighs and throws down his rag. Sylvain beams. “Fine. Let me find something to wear.”

 _Something_ ends up being his uniform, because his usual high-necked collared shirts and Blaiddyd-blue vests are, according to Sylvain, woefully out of style. So Felix dons the black and gold, ties his hair back in a ponytail, and tries to ignore Sylvain’s pointed looks at the state of his boots.

“You’ll have to take me as you find me,” Felix says, as they emerge under the overcast sky of a summer afternoon in Fhirdiad. Thunder booms overhead, and the clouds lie heavy with rain, threatening to break over the crowded streets.

Sylvain swings an arm around Felix and leads him towards the carriage waiting on the curb. “You know me, Felix. I always do.”

The wind rattles at the Gautier carriage as Felix clambers in, and the horses stamp irritably, rolling their eyes at the storm clouds darkening above. 

“How’s the war going?” Felix asks, as Sylvain settles down on the other side of the carriage. Sylvain shrugs.

“It’s fine. Father still wants me to marry what’s her name, the respectable one, but he can’t blame me for wanting to enjoy myself a little first.”

“He does.”

“Alright, he does.” Sylvain stretches his legs as much as the carriage will allow. “But he can’t _stop_ me.”

He can, probably, but Felix manages to hold his tongue. The carriage rattles past the Gold Street Market, where brothels and bars are being swept out and lamps are lit to lure revelers like moths to the open doors, and the lace-covered awnings and white ribbons twisting around the window frames reminds Felix of a cresting wave. Firdhiad always feels stifling, a fist curled round his heart, but there would be no use going back to Fraldarius. It belongs to Cornelia now, even the grey beaches and piled stones where Felix and Dimitri used to fish, ruining their formal clothes while Felix’s father scoured the manor. He remembers the way Dimitri would smile at him, then, his eyes as bright as the rare clear sky over the sea, and the tentative touch of his hand. 

He forces himself back to the present, where a fight is breaking out near one of the brothels. Two men are dragging out a furious, howling noble by the arms, where he’s dumped unceremoniously on the street. An early customer, he thinks, with enough money for a silk waistcoat and sleeves, but the blond-haired tough at the door doesn’t seem to care. His companion, a broad-shouldered man with the brown skin and light hair of a man of Duscur, says something with a polite bow, and the customer swings a fist.

The blond swings back, and the man goes down like a sack of bricks.

“What’s going _on_ out there?” Sylvain asks, as guard whistles ring through the streets. He draws back the curtain just as the blond, chin lifted to the sound of the approaching guard, claps a hand on his companion’s shoulder and takes off down the street.

“Nothing much,” Felix says, watching the man disappear into an alley. “Just another glorious day in Fhirdiad.”

***

Rain drums the low roofs of the artisan district and spits from drain pipes as Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, the last of his line and former crown prince of Faerghus, swings himself onto a ladder and waits for a pair of guards to go thundering by. 

The day has been, as his boss would say, a cock-up of epic proportions. It started out well enough, with a quiet breakfast in the basement of the Abyss, the so-called Club for Discreet Gentlemen of Discerning Taste, but then that noble came in, one of the new ones who’d earned their titles by cozying up to the murderer on the throne, and when he’d laid a hand on one of the entertainers, well. It always has been difficult for Dimitri to contain his temper. It’s the reason the Abyss is one of the few places that will give him work, these days. They don’t necessarily care where their employees come from, and they don’t ask inconvenient questions. 

Rain drips down the back of Dimitri’s collar, and he slides down to the mud of the alley, which he can already feel through his boots. He can’t go back to the Abyss tonight, which means he’ll have to find a dry alley to sleep in, or maybe one of the abandoned houses on Powell Street. 

“Just like old times,” he says, and swipes his long hair out of his left eye. His right is covered by a cloth today, which is already soaked through, and he adjusts the band around his head before he steps out into the rain-swept streets.

It’s amazing how little of Fhirdiad he really knew, before. When he was young, his father used to take him on tours through the city, pointing out the college of magic, the noble houses left empty while their occupants spent the winter in their country homes, the museums and charities and galleries that lined the streets around the palace.

Then, when Dimitri came back from Duscur, barefoot and bloodied from the pits where his father’s soldiers had been buried, he’d learned more about the city in one week than he had in his entire life to date.

For one, he learned to be wary. He learned this early, when he came to Margrave Gautier’s city home in the dead of night, babbling a panicked string of nonsense about death and beheadings and Cornelia’s mages dressed in Duscur uniforms, cutting down his father’s people. He’d been sat down by the house steward, who gave him a soothing drink and assured him that the master of the house would sort everything out.

Then the guards had come, and Dimitri learned how to hide. 

He learned where to go where the people who live there don’t ask questions and don’t answer many, either, how to hide his face behind his hair and filthy clothes until guards just kicked at him as they passed. He learned where to get cheap bread for a few hurried chores, which doorways were safe to sleep in, and how to hide his speech behind a commoner’s tongue, cutting off the ends of his words and drawing out the vowels.

He also, rather unfortunately, learned how to break the lock in a door without breaking the door itself. Which is exactly what he does to the back door of an old, darkened townhouse south of the market, well clear of any local guard houses. 

“Sorry,” he says to the door, which pops open when he tries to shut it against the torrential rain. He spots a chair and drags it under the handle to keep the door shut, shakes out his long, damp hair, and squints around the room. He appears to be in a kitchen, with a heavy table jammed up next to the counters and an empty vase in a corner. He takes off his boots, but the mud has seeped through them, so he can’t help the tracks he makes through the quiet house. Dust hangs in the air, which is thick and stale, and Dimitri drags a heavy white sheet out of a pile and checks it for bugs before he hurriedly towels himself off.

So the house isn’t abandoned, then. Just out of use, like the grand houses of the nobles Dimitri used to trust before the fall. Except it’s already the start of the social season, which means most anyone who’s, well, _anyone_ is already in town. Dimitri trails his fingers along the wallpaper, which is cheap and already peeling, and unconsciously finds himself trying to push it back.

That’s when he hears it. A carriage, heavy wooden wheels sloshing in the puddles outside, past the long hallway and beyond the heavy front door. He waits for it to pass, but the heavy clomp of horse hooves stutters to a halt, and voices call out through the rain. Dimitri backs into the kitchen, but the front door opens at that exact moment, framing a dark, slender figure against the carriage lights outside. Rain patters on the doorstep, and the figure hisses out a curse and closes the door behind them. They stand in the dark, both of them, Dimitri breathless and silent as the grave, while the figure at the door mutters to himself and strikes a match.

The small fire in the man’s fingers illuminates sharp cheekbones and dark hair that curls damp around eyes that glow gold with the light of the match. He sets it to a small lamp on an end table, and Dimitri can’t help the hitch of his breath as he sees the man in full, standing over the lamp in his black and gold uniform.

Felix Fraldarius straightens to his full height, tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear, and freezes as he sees Dimitri rooted to the spot in his kitchen, barefoot and soaked with rain and mud.

“Felix,” Dimitri whispers. Felix’s face goes deathly pale, and Dimitri knows, even as his heartbeat quickens and his feet back him towards the door, that this was precisely the wrong thing to say.


	2. Chapter 2

“Felix.”

Felix’s breath catches in his throat. It’s been years since the last time someone came for him, but they’d never bothered to follow him off the battlefield before. He can still remember the first—fifteen years old and just another body in Cornelia’s new army, trudging across a damp field as fodder for the officers’ war games. He’d been struck from behind just as the horns blew, a sword through his side and hot breath on his neck, and he’d turned to find his death grinning back at him in a familiar gold and black uniform. The fight had been messy, there in the midst of trampling boots and the clash of steel, and Felix had dragged himself to the healers’ tent, leaving the body of his killer in a patch of crushed clover.

War has always been chaotic. It’s easy, so easy, for an arrow to hit the wrong target, for a knife to slip through his jerkin, for a warhorse to rear and thrash. There is no better place to do away with the child of a traitor than in the thick of battle, and Felix has become an expert at surviving war.

Now, he lurches for his sword and drags it down from the rack. The man in his kitchen is tall and broad-shouldered, with shaggy blond hair and a band over one eye, and he looks too much like a fighter to be a wanderer off the street. Felix brandishes his sword, and the man takes a step back.

“Who sent you?” Felix asks. It’s a formality, really; He already knows the answer.

The man’s lips part slightly, and Felix’s chest tightens. It’s an odd feeling, a _sick_ feeling, like he’s been thrown into a crevasse with his limbs flailing, and he strides forward as though prepared to fight it off with his sword alone. The man in his kitchen backs into the door.

“At least have the courtesy of giving me your name before I send you back,” Felix says.

“Felix,” the man says again, and he brushes his bangs out of his face. His voice is low, but there’s something to it that deepens the ache in Felix’s chest, squeezes his ribs, makes it strangely hard to breathe. “Don’t say you’ve forgotten me.”

Thunder rolls over the house, and the dishes in the cabinet rattle softly in the din. 

Felix drops his sword.

He’s on the man before he can say another word, fingers clenched in his cheap cotton shirt, breathing in the scent of mud and rainwater. He drags them both back a step, and when the man’s brow lowers and he grips Felix by the arms, Felix swings him sidelong into the wall. A portrait of Felix’s father goes crashing to the floor, and Felix stares into the stranger’s face, now illuminated by the glow of a solitary lamp.

There it is. The line of Lambert’s jaw, the nose that tilts slightly at the tip, an eye the color of a sunlit sky over the sea. Felix grips the man’s hair with both hands, and doesn’t even notice that his fingers are shaking.

“Felix,” Dimitri says again, like a prayer.

Felix flings himself against the empty coat rack behind him, and Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Felix’s oldest friend and a dead man for the past eight-odd years, casts a long, twisted shadow along the warped boards of the hallway. 

“Perhaps you should sit down,” Dimitri says, and Felix laughs hollowly, clutching the hooks of the coat rack with both hands.

“Might as well.”

He burns his fingers twice trying to light the lamps in the drawing room. Dimitri looks on, a hulking shadow against the rain-dark window. After Felix curses and drops the third match, Dimitri gently slides the matchbook from his fingers. His hands are calloused, warm—Felix’s skin tickles at his touch, and he holds his hand to his stomach as though staunching a wound. Dimitri walks throughout the room, lighting lamps and tugging at curtains, before he bundles a sheet under him so he doesn’t stain the couch when he sits. His long legs knock against the coffee table, and Felix fumbles for his usual chair.

“You survived Duscur,” Felix says, at last.

“Yes.” Dimitri is so much bigger than he used to be, when they were just two awkward, gangly teenagers flopping over the same couch that sags around Dimitri’s thighs. “Eventually.”

“And you never came to us.” Felix drags his nails over his trousers. “We _fought_ for you. For the king. Father died in your name.”

“I know.” Dimitri fixes Felix with his cold blue eye. “You surrendered, as well.”

“I had to.” The words come out harsh, sharp. This isn’t how it should go. It shouldn’t be like this. But Felix is a wound split open, throbbing and jagged, and there’s no softness left to reach for. “What were we fighting for? Ghosts? Who would we have put on the throne? I do what I must to survive, Dim—“ He stops. Takes a breath.

“You can say it.”

Felix digs his nails deeper into his thighs. He doesn’t realize his eyes are closed until he feels the heat of Dimitri above him, the touch of his fingertips on Felix’s jaw. He lifts Felix’s head to the light, and Felix stiffens, the ache in his chest too tight to bear.

“You always did cry so easily,” Dimitri says. His touch is feather-light as he brushes the damp off Felix’s cheeks.

“It’s the rain,” Felix chokes out. 

Outside, the storm lashes the street, cutting them off from the houses on either side, the city beyond them, the world at large. 

“Yes,” Dimitri says. He draws back, and Felix almost leans after him, unwilling to forget the scrape of Dimitri’s fingers on his skin. “Of course.” He sits again, and Felix opens his eyes. Dimitri looks worn, somehow, tired in a way Felix has only felt after a long march, strung-out and thin. “I didn’t mean to come, tonight. It’s best that I don’t draw attention from the city guard, and the houses here are usually empty...”

He shrugs. Felix thinks of Dimitri hiding in an abandoned house, crouching in alleyways, listening to the thump of boots in the street, and grits his teeth.

“So now you’re going to leave,” Felix says. “You’ll disappear again, and I’m supposed to pretend I never saw you. I’ll have to, to live with the fact that you might be caught, that Cornelia’s on the throne when _you’re_ right here—“

“I also do what I must to survive,” Dimitri says. “Not every noble in Faerghus is as loyal as the duke of Fraldarius.”

“The duke is dead,” Felix snaps. His skin feels too tight, and the ache is making his stomach churn every time he so much as breathes. “Cornelia took the title from me before I could come of age.”

“But she isn’t your king,” Dimitri says. “Is she?”

Felix looks down at his knees for a long minute, listening to the roar of rain on the roof. Thunder cracks and booms, and Dimitri’s shadow slides over Felix’s boots, pooling on the floor.

“Stay here,” Felix says. His voice is no more than a whisper. “At least for tonight.”

“I shouldn’t,” Dimitri says, and when the couch creaks, Felix finds himself on his feet without quite knowing how he got there. Dimitri looks at him warily, half hidden behind his hair.

“Dimitri,” Felix says. It’s as though a spell has been broken, a seal cracked. Felix’s breath gusts out of him, shaking and ragged, and he clenches his hands at his sides as Dimitri’s gaze softens at last.

“Alright, Felix.” Dimitri says. “I’ll stay.”

***

Felix tries to convince Dimitri to sleep on the bed that night, but Dimitri takes one look at Felix’s economical bedroom and shakes his head with a wry smile. He sleeps in the hall, sprawled out on one of Felix’s pallets he uses in campaigns, and Felix half expects to trip over his feet when he gets up in the morning. The other half of him expects Dimitri to be gone, an inconvenient ghost borne of bad wine from the baron’s smoking room that evening, blown away by the storm.

Instead, Felix finds Dimitri in the kitchen, scrubbing out pans in the sink. 

“Your larder’s a mess,” Dimitri says, as Felix stands there, one hand on the wall. Dimitri’s grey shirt is rumpled from the rain, and he’s unbuttoned it to the waist, where his taut muscle and chest is exposed to the morning sun. “You really should hire someone for this. Even the people in the lower city pay a few coppers for a neighbor to do the washing up.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Felix says, and Dimitri blushes.

“Ah. Of course. My apologies.” Dimitri offers him a tentative smile. “I... should have said it before, Felix, but... it’s good to see you well. Rumor always has you off to the wars, it seems.”

“They’ll let me retire when I’m ninety, I’m sure,” Felix says. He pushes away from the wall and takes the pan from Dimitri. “It’s. I’m glad you’re not dead.”

Dimitri’s smile is dazzling. “I suspected as much.”

Felix takes over the cooking, since he’s the only one who knows what’s still edible, while Dimitri hesitantly explains why he needs to lay low for a day or two. “The brothel’s not a terrible place to work,” he adds, when Felix raises his brows. “The workers there are quite nice, and the proprietor will move heaven and earth to protect them. He should be able to make excuses for me soon enough.”

“And no one’s seen you?” Felix asks. “You aren’t exactly forgettable.”

Dimitri grabs a rag and starts wiping dust off the table. “Thank you, Felix. But most people don’t remember me like you do. I bet you could parade me around the palace and even Cornelia will just assume I’m a somewhat familiar servant.”

Felix almost laughs at that, then stops, staring down at the single salvageable potato in his hands. “That’s a thought,” he says, in a quiet voice.

“Mm?”

“Cornelia doesn’t know you’re alive, does she?”

“I’d say yes,” Dimitri says, scowling slightly at the table. “Yes, she does.”

“But if the rest of the court found out,” Felix says. “If we could get them on your side—“

“Out of the question,” Dimitri says. “They chose their side at Duscur. And no offense, Felix, but you’re not exactly, ah...”

“I don’t have your talent for making friends,” Felix says. “I know. You’ve probably befriended half the city by now.”

Dimitri smiles to himself. “Not half, surely.”

Felix takes his knife to the potato with a little more savagery than it probably deserves. “I could engage with the season, I suppose. Figure out who can be trusted. With enough people convinced of your legitimacy...”

“You’d do that?” Dimitri straightens, and Felix fumbles with the knife, slicing a line down his palm. “You’d put me on the throne? Now? You don’t even know what I am, Felix. Who I am. What I’ve done.”

“I don’t,” Felix says. His heart seems to be hammering away in his throat, now. “So you’ll have to not let me down, then.”

Dimitri crosses to the hall closet, where he pulls out a handkerchief from a high pile of unused cloths, and steps around the counter. “And you’ll need to learn how to behave like a noble,” he says. He takes Felix’s hand, and Felix suppresses a shiver as he carefully wraps the handkerchief around his palm. “You’ll need a valet, at least. Someone to give you consequence.”

“I can’t afford that,” Felix says, somehow breathless. Dimitri ties the cloth tight, but doesn’t pull away. He towers over Felix, tall and bright-eyed in his unbuttoned shirt and mud-stained trousers, and trails his fingers over the chapped skin of Felix’s knuckles.

“I remember enough, I think,” Dimitri says. Felix startles, but he holds his hand firm. “I can help you get by. And I have plenty of references.”

“You do,” Felix says, in a strangled voice.

“Mm. And my pay’s not much, in the end.” He releases Felix’s hand. “Just the throne. If you can manage it.”

“Well,” Felix says, heat building in his already flaming cheeks. “Consider yourself hired.”


	3. Chapter 3

“He can be trusted?” 

Deep in the lower levels of the Abyss gentleman’s club, Dimitri folds his clothes into a cloth sack and shrugs a shoulder. His lodgings consist of a spare room once outfitted for one of the more practical workers, but was stripped and gutted for storage when they moved on. It’s a fitting place for him, he thinks. A creature of silks and coin, scraped-out and hollow, full of forgotten things.

“Felix can be trusted as much as anyone,” Dimitri says. “Except you, of course.” Dedue, who’s been with him since Duscur, just teenagers fleeing the fires of an unnecessary war, leans on a stack of crates and watches Dimitri pack. His white hair has grown long since Duscur, and he’s starting to grow out the stubble on his jaw, which makes him look more imposing still.

“I’ll keep an eye on the house,” he says. “I don’t like you being some pampered noble’s pet.”

“Dedue.” Dimitri gives him a wry smile. “I’ve been more than that, before.”

Not that it lasted very long. Dimitri worked the pleasure street circuit in secret for all of a week before Dedue found out where he was going, and that was the end of that. The most Dimitri can say for it is that it was uncomfortable to have to bend to take a man down when he was already on his knees, and he never did learn where to put his hands. The lanky nature of the Blaiddyd line has done him few favors.

“Tell me if he tries anything,” Dedue says.

“He won’t,” Dimitri says. He remembers the tremor in Felix’s hand when he touched him, the way he swayed on his feet when Dimitri pulled away, and touches his own wrist as though trying to burn that sensation into his skin and hold it there.

Dedue walks him to Felix’s house, just to make sure he knows where to find him, and leans against an empty doorway on the other side of the street. “You’ll let me know if you need out,” he says. It isn’t a question.

“Of course,” Dimitri says. “You’ll be the first.” Then he slips into Felix’s house, which really should be locked, and dusts off his boots on the threadbare mat.

Felix is restocking the pantry when Dimitri finds him. His hair is tied up in a messy topknot, his sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and he’s wearing a dark blue vest with black buttons down the back, which would look dashing enough if one of the buttons weren’t falling off the string. His boots are still unpolished, and there’s dust on his knees, as though he spent the morning scrubbing the floors.

“Nobles don’t do their own shopping,” Dimitri says, and Felix curses sharply, fumbling with a tomato. He drops it in a basket and whirls on Dimitri. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to startle you. Surely you heard me come in.”

“Yes,” Felix says. His jaw clenches. “I did. You just. I always do my own shopping,” he finally says, in a rush. He looks so like his brother when he scowls that Dimitri has to smile. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“No, but you want to make connections,” Dimitri says. He gently slides into Felix’s space, sidling him out with a shoulder. “You’ll need to act like you _care_ about being noble.”

“I don’t,” Felix says, simply. Dimitri raises a brow. 

“Pretend to care, then.” He starts putting Felix’s groceries away, quietly noting that there seems to be rather more food than he needs, even with Dimitri picking off the leftovers. “You spent too much on this. It’ll spoil soon.”

“You always eat like a beast,” Felix says, crossing his arms. His ears burn pink. “Even if you can’t taste it. I remember that much.”

Dimitri smiles, and Felix’s scowl deepens. “That’s kind of you, Felix.”

“Just don’t want you eating me out of house and home,” Felix mutters.

“Of course.” Dimitri turns his smile down at his hands. “You should get out of those clothes, by the way.”

“ _What._ ”

“If you want to call on anyone, you need to look the part,” Dimitri says. Honestly, how can he have forgotten so soon? Perhaps it was the military living that did it. “I’ll have to go through your clothes today—I’m a decent hand with the needle—“

“The hell you are,” Felix sputters, red in the face and pressed flush to the wall. He clenches his arms tight as though he’s trying to become one with the peeling wallpaper. “You don’t have a delicate touch with anything. My sword—“

“Saints, I was a child, Felix.”

“And the ball,” Felix adds. “And that time you broke a window by leaning on it the wrong way.”

“I mend all my own clothes,” Dimitri says, before Felix can list off all his early sins. “Clearly, you can’t say the same. Take off that vest, at least. Please,” he adds, when he realizes, a little belatedly, that he’s giving orders in someone else’s kitchen. 

Felix takes a deep breath, unlocks his arms, and reaches behind his back. “Fine.”

“And your boots, please. I’ll polish those this afternoon.”

“You don’t—“ Felix winces as he tries to reach for a button. “Have to—I do that on parade days often enough—“

Dimitri sighs. It’s like watching him struggle with his laces on the beach again, with Dimitri leaning down to tangle them up into a giant knot that Glenn eventually has to undo. As usual. But Glenn is gone, now, lost with the dead of Duscur, and here’s Felix, still fumbling.

“Allow me,” Dimitri says. He skirts the counter and lays a hand on Felix’s shoulder. Felix stiffens, but when Dimitri pushes softly, he obligingly turns so Dimitri is facing the line of buttons at his back. Dimitri undoes the top one, which is halfway out, and can’t help but brush the back of his knuckles against the silk. It’s old, possibly one of his father’s, but it smells like the woodsmoke of the fire pit by the market. Dimitri can remember a time when everything of Felix’s smelled vaguely like the sea. They were always sneaking off to the dunes, skipping beach stones over the waters of the pond by the groundskeeper’s hut, cutting grass to make high, shrill whistles that rang across the sea. Dimitri used to hate turning over his clothes to the maids in Fhirdiad, losing the scent of that place. He undoes the buttons mechanically, slowly, and wonders how much of his old things are left in the palace. Perhaps his bottle of sand is still there, or the sea glass his step-mother had twisted up into a wire wind chime. Felix, Sylvain and Ingrid’s letters, kept stuffed in a box with colored ribbons Ingrid gave him at a festival, once. His favorite books.

“There we go,” he says, when the last button dangles loosely off an inch of frayed string. He pulls it apart, and Felix obediently slides his arms out, a blush creeping up the back of his neck. His shirt hugs his torso, even if his sleeves are a little loose, and Dimitri can see the muscles of his back bunch and flex as he moves. “Much better.”

They take tea in the drawing room, which is unfortunately still thick with dust, so Dimitri has to be careful as he threads a needle through the vest in his lap. A pile of clothes dragged from Felix’s closet lie on an empty chair, and Felix sits barefoot and practically indecent on the settee, where he’s bent over a scrap of paper next to a half-eaten hunk of bread. It isn’t exactly the sort of fare a former duke should be used to, but Dimitri supposes they have time for that.

“Sylvain’s a given,” Felix says. “He’s been talking about Duscur being off ever since it happened.”

“His father may be trouble,” Dimitri says. He isn’t sure if he wants to tell Felix, yet. He can still feel the chill in his bones, hear the approaching thump of booted feet in the Gautier foyer. “I hear he’s loyal to Cornelia.”

“Yeah, that’s not a surprise. He and Sylvain don’t exactly think alike. Then Ingrid. Annette’s loyal. Young, but she has a...” Felix’s eyes go slightly soft, for a moment. “She’s kind. You’ll get along. Not sure about some of the royal mages, but she has a friend, Mercedes, I think she’s from Adrestia, but... she’s also house Bartel, so. There’s a story there. I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to,” Dimitri says. “You’ll need to win their trust if we’re to do this. How’s your teaside manner?”

Felix blinks. “My what.”

Oh, dear. Dimitri tries not to smile down at the seam he’s stitching. “How do you _talk_ to people, Felix? Other than me.”

“I. The way I always do.” Felix draws his legs up under him. Hm.

“Alright, then. Good afternoon, Lord Felix.” He nods deeply, and Felix’s lips part. “Have you heard the news about Lord Gloucester?”

“What. What are we doing.”

“We’re having a conversation,” Dimitri says. “You know, Felix. Like people do.”

“I don’t. What about Lord Gloucester? He’s from the Alliance, why should I—“

“Oh, hm.” Dimitri shakes his head. “I didn’t realize you cared so little for the safety of our allies, Lord Felix.”

Felix’s brows snap together. “Hold on.”

“You need me to wait? Whatever’s the matter, Lord Felix?”

“Stop that,” Felix says. Dimitri grins. “I can’t. I’m not good at, at pretending. I should be able to say what I want to say without beating around the bush and talking about nobles I don’t care for or weather that doesn’t matter.”

Perhaps they _do_ need Sylvain, after all. “We’ll work on it,” Dimitri says. “In the meantime, do you have any invitations?” The owner of the Abyss, Yuri, is always drowning in invitations; Cards to gambling dens, theaters, noble houses and remote villas. There have to be at least a handful for Felix.

“Sort of,” Felix says, and takes three cards off the end table. “The opera, which everyone’s invited to. Lord Lonato’s adopted son just earned a knighthood, apparently. Good for him, I guess. Sylvain wants me over for cards.”

“All on the same day?” Dimitri asks. Felix shakes his head. “Then you should accept all of them. It’s no use being picky right now, and Lord Lonato seems nice enough.” He’d made waves in the lower city a few years before, at least, when he’d caught a thief burgling his house and gave him a place to stay, instead. Yuri has discreetly sent people to check on them, just to make sure nothing untoward was happening, but from what Dimitri knows of the story on the street, he ended up being precisely what he claimed to be. A rare feat, they said, for a noble.

“The opera’s first,” Felix says, and groans softly. “I can skip that, right? It’s just some woman singing about how attractive your great-grandfather was.”

“Awkward,” Dimitri says, with a small smile that Felix doesn’t return, “but I’ve heard worse. Trust me. And you’ll be fine, Felix. We just need to get you looking the part first, and then I’m sure you’ll rise to the occasion.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I remember you used to love the theater.”

Felix, who has been pacing the boards of his bedroom for the past half hour, looks up from the laces of his newly-mended shirt and stares at Dimitri as though he’s a fiend sent directly from hell to torment him. “When did I love theater, Dimitri.”

“There was that stand in the plaza,” Dimitri says. He sets Felix’s boots next to the door. They’ve been polished to a shine, even if the wrinkles in the leather do stand out—He thinks, dimly, that there might be a way to fix that—and his clothes have been pressed and folded over the rack. Dimitri himself has borrowed a ribbon to tie back his long hair, which needs to be cut again, and Felix won’t stop glancing at it. He checks it, idly, just to make sure it hasn’t been tied wrong.

“The stand in the plaza?” Felix asks. “You mean the _puppet show?_ ”

Dimitri shrugs. “It’s still theater. And it made you laugh. You have a nice laugh,” he adds, and Felix’s face colors dramatically. “Or I always thought so.”

Felix turns on his heel and continues pacing, shoulders hunched. 

“We used to hold plays at the brothel,” Dimitri says. He sits in an ancient chair he barely remembers from the old Fraldarius manor, and watches Felix pace. He moves so gracefully, even when he’s brimming with nerves, like a wild cat in the snow. “I wasn’t allowed to act, though. Apparently, I look too much like a villain for any other role, but I kept apologizing when I tied the heroine to the tree.”

Felix snorts. “You would.”

“I didn’t want to cut off her circulation,” Dimitri explains. “Nevertheless, I was relocated to the audience. But the plays were quite nice.” He sighs. “Perhaps you should get dressed before Sylvain arrives.”

“It’s that late?” Felix eyes the clothes on the rack almost fearfully, and Dimitri rises from the chair. 

“Allow me to help you, then,” Dimitri says. “And try to relax.”

Felix makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, but he does collapse onto the edge of the bed, which is a small blessing. Dimitri lifts a milky blue overshirt off the rack—It’s sleeveless, with a high collar and fitted sides to accentuate Felix’s trim waist. Dimitri kneels before Felix and starts doing up the buttons in the front.

“I can—“ Felix starts to say.

“No,” Dimitri says. “I like this.” Felix’s fingers curl on the bedsheets as Dimitri tugs at the shirt to close it properly. It’s true—Dimitri likes putting things in their proper place, arranging them just so, smoothing out the wrinkles and setting them aside to be admired. It helps, when the dreams of Duscur weigh on him, when his father’s ghost seems to dog his steps, when the occupied castle looms over the horizon, to be able to find some small measure of control. And it’s pleasant to see Felix come together by his own hands, transform into the picture a polished, well-groomed gentleman.

He smoothes out a line in Felix’s collar, and feels Felix’s breath hitch slightly. 

“You’ll be alright,” Dimitri says, looking into his eyes. Felix glances away. “They’ll love you once they get to know you.”

Felix’s cheeks go pink. “I don’t know how you can say that with a straight face.”

They both jump at a knock at the door, and Felix starts forward before Dimitri, with a strength that startles him, holds Felix in place with one hand on his chest.

“Stay,” he says. “Please. My lord.”

“We probably need to work on this,” Felix says.

“At least refrain from getting the door yourself, Felix.” Dimitri heads down the stairs before Felix can rush after him, rattling paintings on the wall, and braces himself at the door. Felix is thumping down behind him, shoving on his boots as he goes, and slams into Dimitri’s back with a grunt just as Dimitri opens the door.

“No backing out now, Fraldarius,” Sylvain Gautier says. He stops short, staring at Dimitri, and lets his gaze slide over to Felix, who is clinging to the back of Dimitri’s shirt in order to lace up his boots.

Dimitri bows, hiding his face behind his hair, and tries to think beyond the sudden hammering of his heart.

“My lord will be with you shortly,” Dimitri says. He tries not to think of the door slamming open in the Gautier estate, the cold fear in his chest, the desperate run through the streets in the dark. 

“I’m right here, he can see me,” Felix says, and Dimitri lets out a sharp breath as Sylvain turns from him, hands in his pockets.

“Well,” he says. “At least you hired someone. Even if he does look like he just cut someone in a back alley somewhere. No offense, of course.”

“None taken, my lord,” Dimitri says, still slightly bowed. Most nobles, he knows, will put Dimitri aside as soon as they know where he stands in the social order of things, but he can see Sylvain hesitate, rocking back on his heels.

“Let’s get this over with,” Felix says, pushing Sylvain round by the arm. “I just hired the guy, Sylvain, don’t make me regret it. Uh.” He pauses at the doorway. “I’ll be. Back. After midnight, probably.”

“Very good, my lord,” Dimitri says. Felix goes a dark pink, makes some sort of strangled attempt at a farewell, and drags Sylvain down the path. Dimitri waits until they’ve stepped into their carriage, then slowly closes the door, presses his back to it, and lets out a ragged sigh.

***

“You hired him off the street, didn’t you?” Sylvain asks, as soon as Felix clambers into the plush interior of the Gautier carriage. He’s impeccable in a fine, doe-brown coat with silver cufflinks, and he leans forward on his knees as Felix slumps in the corner of the carriage, pressing his shoulder to the door. “Did you see that eye? And he’s built like one of those northern giants—a little less meat on him, of course, but—“

“You’re the one who said I should hire someone,” Felix snaps. “And he’s fine. He comes highly recommended.”

“Yeah? By who? Or is it a whom? Whom’s are dangerous, Felix.”

“By people,” Felix says.

Sylvain grins. “You _did_ find him on the street! Felix!”

 _I found him in my house, actually,_ Felix doesn’t say, but he scowls at Sylvain all the same and shrinks into his coat. Which fits him perfectly, now that Dimitri has mended the sleeve, and Felix touches his throat, where Dimitri had gently clasped the button with his calloused fingers.

“I was thinking,” Felix says.

“Uh oh. Should I be worried?”

“Shut up. I was thinking, Sylvain. You know how, ah. What my father used to say about Duscur.”

Sylvain goes still. “Felix.”

“What if I were to say... hypothetically...” 

The carriage jostles as Sylvain, quick as a shot, throws himself onto the bench next to Felix. He presses a hand over Felix’s mouth, holding him back against the carriage wall, and lets out one of his loud, false laughs. “Goddess, I know,” he says, and it chills Felix to hear that jovial, careless voice come from a face twisted in a tight, grim expression. “Good thing you were rescued from the machinations of _that_ madman, yeah?”

Felix burns hot, but Sylvain just presses him further to the wall and whispers, harsh and hoarse, “You think my father doesn’t bribe his servants to listen in on their betters, Felix? Saints, here I thought you had _some_ sense of self-preservation.”

Felix just stares at him. When he doesn’t speak, Sylvain slowly lifts his hand from Felix’s mouth, and Felix pushes him away. 

“Yes,” Felix says, at last. The lie scalds his tongue. “Thank the goddess I saw sense.”

“You should have gone to me when that mess started,” Sylvain says, and fixes Felix with that same, stern look. His hands clench in his lap. “What kind of friend would I be if I let you walk into trouble, hm?”

“And I can count on you,” Felix says, slowly, “if anything happens again?”

Sylvain examines Felix from across the bench for a long while, streetlights flickering across his face, shining in his eyes. Felix eases closer, pressing Sylvain against the wall, this time, and practically climbs into his lap in order to hold him there. His breath is hot against Sylvain’s cheek, and Sylvain shifts uncomfortably, feet scraping on the rug. The carriage rolls to a halt.

“What if I told you it wasn’t done,” Felix whispers. Sylvain’s gaze is sharp, not at all the lazy, uninterested glassiness of a careless noble.

“Of course it is,” he whispers back. “They killed them, Felix. Look who’s on the throne. It’s over.”

The door swings open, and Felix groans. He grabs Sylvain by the hair and drags him down—Sylvain’s boot slams against the side of the carriage, and it rocks slightly, the two of them falling into each other in a tangle of limbs and pressed suits.

“Sir!” a voice cries out, and Sylvain makes a sound in the back of his throat, low and almost pleading.

“Felix,” he says. “If I knew you—I would have put on a better—“

Felix presses his lips to Sylvain’s ear, and the door hastily clicks shut. “I know I’m shitty at this,” he says.

“I... wouldn’t say that.”

“For the love of the goddess, Sylvain. Think. Where did I find my new servant?”

Felix pulls back. Sylvain stares up at him, lips parted slightly, panting a little, his perfect coat rumpled under Felix’s hands.

“No,” he says.

“Built like a northern giant,” Felix says, in a low voice.

“Sir?” Someone raps on the carriage door. “Ah. I don’t want to. Don’t want to interrupt, but we have. Arrived.”

Sylvain’s eyes are overbright in the glow of the street lamps of the opera house, and he looks at Felix like he’s a dragon in human form, a strange, unknown being inhabiting Felix’s skin.

“We aren’t going to the opera,” Sylvain says at last, in a croaking voice.

“No,” Felix says. “I think not.”

Sylvain lunges for the carriage door. He spills out, somehow graceful even in his disheveled, breathless state, and unfolds with a smile that fools everyone but Felix. “Thank you so much, Tomas, for bringing us here, but my dear Felix—Felix, my sweet, don’t be shy—“

“Your _what_ ,” Felix says. 

“He’s shy,” Sylvain says. “Can you blame him? Come on, precious, it isn’t as though we can keep it a secret any longer, is it?”

Felix glares daggers at Sylvain as he slowly emerges from the carriage, fixed under the curious gaze of several well-dressed opera attendees. Sylvain takes his hand and kisses it gallantly, and Felix briefly considers strangling him. 

“I don’t believe we’ll be needing your services tonight,” Sylvain says to the blushing, deeply alarmed Tomas. “Be a good man and tell my father whatever he wants to hear, hm?”

With that, Sylvain wraps his arm around Felix’s waist and reels him in. “Come on, darling, let’s see if you’re better luck in the gambling halls than the last three pretty things I had on my arm.”

“I’ll eat your fucking dice,” Felix says. Sylvain grins.

“Keep talking like that, and you’ll have me at your mercy in—“ he glances back, sees that the carriage driver is gone, and sighs. “Good goddess, Felix, eating _dice?_ ”

“The fuck was that,” Felix snarls, pulling out of Sylvain’s grip. The cool air is a blessing on his face, which may well be on fire. 

“You’re the one who pressed me to the carriage bench and tried to ravish me, Felix. What did you expect me to do?” He starts up a brisk pace, and his hands keep flexing, like he can’t quite figure out what to do with them. “I. When you said. Is it.” He clears his throat. “He looked, looked younger than...”

“It’s the son,” Felix says, and Sylvain starts walking faster, his coat flying out behind him. Felix trots to keep up. “Sylvain. Calm down.”

“Calm down, he says.” Sylvain laughs softly. “Calm down. Yes. I’ll do that. You make it so easy, Felix, don’t you? Did you know before? Did you—“ He glances behind him, at the fading figures still watching them disappear into the street, and yanks Felix into an alley. “Did you find him out there, Felix? On the field?”

Felix tries to wrench Sylvain’s hands off his front. “No. He’s been here.”

“ _Here?_ ” Sylvain draws back, stricken. “This whole time? And he never—“

“I know.”

Sylvain drags his hands through his hair. “Saints. Alone, for years, and we were just—I’ve been, goddess, I know the rumors have me as a worthless womanizer, but I—“

“Hey,” Felix says. “Don’t. Let’s go.”

“Right,” Sylvain says. He takes a shuddering breath. “Yes.”

In the end, Felix has to keep a hand on Sylvain’s back to stop him from running all the way to the townhouse, and Sylvain hovers at the door, rocking back and forth on his heels, dragging his hair into an untidy mess.

“ _Sylvain,_ ” Felix says, and Sylvain jumps. “Settle.”

He opens the door, and hears a rustling from the kitchen. Dimitri appears in nothing more than a thin cotton shirt and grey trousers, his hair still tied back in a ribbon, soap suds on his muscular arms. He smiles at Felix, brow raised in concern, but his smile freezes as he sees Sylvain at Felix’s back.

Sylvain pushes past Felix. He doesn’t bother taking his boots off at the door, just strides down the hall, a frenetic mess of nerves and perfume and unkempt red hair. Just as Dimitri tenses, as Felix expects Sylvain to pull him into one of his bone-breaking hugs or slap him painfully on the back, Sylvain stops short, takes a ragged, broken breath, and drops to his knees at Dimitri’s feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, the ship tag changed! Sylvain came into play and suddenly the whole fic shifted. It definitely wasn’t planned this way from the beginning, but hey. Why not.


End file.
